Happy Holidays, You Beautiful Masochists

Thank you for joining us

As we sit down this Sunday evening, still in our PJs, looking forward to the hours of midnight wrapping ahead while prepping for Christmas dinner, we at The Line wanted to take just a minute to offer our thanks to you, our wonderful — and sometimes terrible — but all totally necessary and appreciated subscribers.

The last year has been nothing short of a gong show. We saw a federal election and a political comeback for the Liberal party that can’t be matched in living Canadian history. We have a historic re-alignment of American self conception and power. We are coming upon a collective realization that we can’t continue to run our country like third-generation burnout children who have inherited a declining Super 8 on the TransCan. It’s time for us all to get serious; to re-discover why our country exists, and to decide what we need to do to ensure that it thrives. We don’t have a clear consensus on what that’s going to look like, but at least we’re having the conversation.

Meanwhile, next year is going to be worse.

Sorry.

Even if we do avoid a snap federal election — and we may not! — we’re now looking at at least two probable separation referenda, in Alberta and Quebec. UMSCA/CUSMA/MUSCA will begin to dominate our national preoccupations as we head toward the July 1, 2026 six-year Joint Review of the trade agreement. Midterms hit in November. The Russians are going to continue to be a destabilizing force on the global scene — and Canada’s role in the Arctic may meet that risk head on. The Americans will continue to be weird.

The Line is now 5 years old, and through that time this platform has allowed us refuge from the economic and cultural vacillations that buffet the mainstream media at large. The environment in which we began this project in 2020 — Peak Woke, if you will — is dramatically different today. There is a greater openness toward talking about subjects that were suddenly rendered taboo not so long ago; that’s going to continue to progress, opening discussion and debate on topics ranging from transgenderism to immigration and national identity. This environment creates new risks and new opportunities for us — we want to be on the forefront of many of these conversations, while helping to steer those dialogues away from the counterproductive; ie, conspiracism, nativism and outright bigotry.

And, really, we couldn’t do that without you, our Line readers and subscribers. We may never be the largest media outlet on the scene, but we can try to be a redoubt of thoughtfulness and sanity in a world that seems to be increasingly drawn toward outrage and tribalism. That doesn’t mean we’ll never be wrong. It doesn’t mean we’ll never piss you off. But it does mean you can trust us to tell you what we really think, even when we know you’ll disagree with us. And if you think that’s worth your time and your attention, we genuinely are so grateful to have you here.

So, thank you. You’re the brave and the few. We will continue to be here as long as we are of service to you.

But for now, we need to enjoy the holidays. So do you. We’re all going to need to rest up for the year ahead. So go eat too much. Read some easy fiction. Watch movies. We’ll be back in early January. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Glorious Holiday to you and yours,
The Line Editors